Losing weight is fairly easy - keeping it off is the real trick. Back when I was regularly training/racing I literally couldn't eat enough to maintain. I was just over 5'10" tall, weighed 148 pounds and had the resting heart rate of a corpse on downers. When I quit riding in the early 1990s, I started to steadily gain weight. I took up cycling again in April 2009 after I'd ballooned up to 214 pounds. Thanks to cycling, cutting out the junk/processed food and religiously tracking my diet at www.livestrong.com, I'm down to 159 pounds and my resting heart rate is less than my age (I'm 55).

What I learned: You can't just diet - you have to change your lifestyle. You need to think of your body as a machine with food being your fuel and exercise as your maintenance. At least that's what works for me.